What Do You Feed Your Toddler for Breakfast??

Dont let your toddler dictate food time. Offer different HEALTHY options, no child needs trix cereal. She can either choose a healthy option, or not eat for the time being. When she says she is hungry again, offer the same options. When she is hungry enough, she will eat what you offer her. Try more bland foods at first, like bananas and whole wheat toast. Kids arent picky eaters unless you allow them to be.

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Some things I've given my girls for breakfast:
fresh fruit
dry cheerios (or with milk)
applesauce
yogurt
toast with peanut butter or jam or just a little butter to make it soft
waffles
pancakes
eggs (I pop the yolk and fry it flat, then top with a little cheese)
cereal (but I try to stay away from the ones with TOO much sugar)

If she's refusing to eat anything besides Trix from the breakfast food catagory, why not give her non-breakfast food? You say she's picky, so I'm not sure what she eats, but why not just heat up a little plate of leftovers? Or make her a peanut butter (or whatever she likes) sandwhich?

Breakfast doesn't have to be "breakfast", just so long as it's healthy and she'll eat without starting the day with a battle :o)

1 mom found this helpful

My son has always been a super picky eater. Right now there are days when all he has for breakfast is milk. Other days he will also have some bread or a waffle or cereal (only reeses's cereal). That's it.

Yogurt, cottage cheese or cereal bars. Trader Joe's has a thick yogurt that doesn't make much of a mess.

My boys love oatmeal, but I have to have things convenient and use the Quaker ones, and they especially love the Dinosaur Eggs. (Lots of sugar, I know, don't care.)

They also like the frozen pancakes from the grocery store, sometimes more than real pancakes. My husband gives them cereal bars when he's home (I've tried to avoid that, but hey, he feeds them :), and there are times they love scrambled eggs with some fresh spinach in them. They also like yogurt and I usually mix yogurt with some real cereal instead of milk since it is less sloppy but they get both the yogurt and cereal (like Cheerios or something).

Toddler's tastes change frequently, so always offer her things she has not liked just so she continues to have a chance to like them. My boys also, of course, devour Cheerios, and that is not a bad breakfast cereal at all, so I am quite happy if they eat them most days, too.

My son will be 2 this week! anyway, usually I make some healthy muffins. Then freeze them and thaw one each morning (bran banana and blueberry, or carrot raisin) with a side of fruit and milk.
This week we have been on a kick of Trader Joe's whole wheat waffles (the frozen ones) with peanut butter and bananas on them. Good luck!

fruit shakes, toast and butter, cheerios, frosted mini wheats, yogurt, english raisin muffins, morning star meatless sausages, granola, bananas, mangos.

My 16 month old is a great eater so I can easily give several ideas. She loves yogurt, but will also eat oatmeal, scrambled eggs, cereal, pancakes, applesauce, and other fruits.... Maybe your little one is just going through a phase though. My 16 mo never cared for the gerber cereal but I remember my oldest loved it like your little one. Best of luck :)

My toddlers are now all in their late 20's and early 30's, how can that be? It's not unusual your sweetie is just liking what she is getting. Just keep offering different things along with the oatmeal. You might try 1/2 banana with a mouth cut out to make it look like a dolphin or toast w/ a bit of peanut butter cut into heart shapes. I know it's messy for a toddler but toddlers LOVE to dip things....maybe some strawberries or banana w/ yogurt to dip, cut up the french toast or waffle to dip into syrup or honey. Try to make it fun! As long as what she IS eating is good for her, ie: the oatmeal...no worries. Toddlers are fussy eaters for quite awhile. It will seem she isn't eating anything sometimes and you will wonder how she isn't starving! She will eat if she is hungry, don't worry, she won't starve.

Besides the things you mentioned: instant oatmeal with yogurt (flavored and unflavored oatmeal), vanilla wafers, raisins, cereal bar, granola bar, banana or sliced apple.

Have you ever used one of those sandwich cutters to make her toast into a shape? My son will only eat a dinosaur or train sandwich!

Surprisingly, both my 2 year old son and my 1 year old daughter LOVE the Quaker Oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar in it. That is actually their #1 favorite breakfast... over eggs and bacon... over cereal... it's weird because I haven't met a child that loves oatmeal so much until mine. You might try it and see if she likes it.

My son eats a banana/blueberries/strawberries/apple & 1/2 a cup of yogurt every weekday morning. He gets mad when we run out of his "O-gert" and he has to settle for Cheerios of some sort. He's been eating that since he got off of baby food around his 1st bday. Now that he's 2.5, he wants "Banola" on it too (granola) and we buy the Bear Naked brand (just lowered their prices too : ). He wants to 'spice' the yogurt up. But I can honestly say that I don't love all yogurts... There are some seriously gross ones. He's pretty picky on the BRAND of yogurt. Maybe try a different brand?

Maybe try the new Cinnamon Cheerios. Those are REALLY tasty and pretty darned healthy to boot.

Hi Momma---The biggest thing to remember with little one's your daughter's age is that it can take 10 or more tries to get her to accept a new food. If she is eating the same HEALTHY thing every day, I wouldn't worry about it...except to keep trying to offer new foods on a regular schedule. Dr. Sears talks about picky eaters at his website, www.askDrSears.com.

You really don't want to be giving her any of the cold cereals that are currently sold as (un)healthy breakfast foods. These are mostly sugar and offer little to no nutrition. Even the fortification is meaningless as nothing is a substitute to food eaten in the form mother nature offers it. You state in the 'so what happened box' that "if she stays healthy, I'm all for whatever she will eat". The problem is that she will NOT stay healthy if her diet consists primarily of highly processed foods. She will be vulnerable to viruses and likely catch more colds than you would care to deal with. Research shows that a diet high in sugary foods makes the immune system lazy and can compromise it's function for a time after comsuming those foods. When looking for cereals and breads, whole grain foods, you want to look at the label and look for a ratio of 4 grams of carbs to 1 gram of fiber. You can be assured it is a healthy cereal when you see that.

I work with a forward thinking Naturopath who has her PhD in Nutrition. I have a bunch of materials I can share that might help. I would like to offer what I call, The Family Nutrition Packet to you. It talks about some of these tips, along with negative ingredients to avoid and WHY. Let me know if you'd like it. I wish you good luck. Just know that this is likely a temporary situation and soon her food likes will change again. Take care, D.

Both my girls eat any type of grain for breakfast without hesitation. Hot Cereal (cream of wheat, oatmeal, grits...), Cold cereal (I keep away from sugar cereals, Regular Cheerios, Chex, Kix...), Pancakes, Waffles, biscuits... They LOVE fruit too. So we try to eat a few fresh fruits for breakfast as well.

You allow your kid to be a picky eater. I know they come by it naturally, its all part of challenging authority and developing personal taste. My philosophy is that its okay to have a few things you don't like, we all do, however, the list of what you like needs to be way longer then what you don't like. I don't cater to my kids wishes for food. They eat what we serve. If its something they don't like, I give them 2-3 bites worth and insist that they eat that much. They can't have more of what they like until the stuff they don't like is gone. They have consequences for not finishing food. If they don't finish by the time the rest of the family has eaten I set a timer (5-10 min, depending on how much they have left). If they don't finish by the end of that timer they have a consequence.

I don't give snacks, period. I don't let my kids eat in between meals, or drink milk or juice between meals. They can of course have as much water as they wish. No desert or snack if they can't eat what you give them. They have to wait until the next meal. Some kids become milk/juice babies, that's all they want to eat. Its not healthy at this age. Milk should only be 12 oz. per day, and at 2 even less. Juice should be a treat, not a daily occurrence. Its full of sugar, even if its 100% juice. Give them fresh fruit and water and they get better nutrition then any juice out there.

Best wishes. Stay consistent and your daughter will benefit from learning to eat foods that are good for her, but not her favorite!

My son is 19mo. I find that he's willing to eat whatever I give him if I hold off on giving him milk first thing in the morning. If he has his milk, he'll only eat a bit of food.

Not sure if that'll help, but it worked for us.

I have 2 girls now they are 5 and 9 they both tried to tell us that they don't like something that we would try to feed them all the time, the 5 year old was worse because of her sister would say she does not like it and the 5 year old would imitate her.some times we would have to tell them if they dont like it they would have to go hungry until the next meal i know this sounds mean but soon as they asked for a snack in a little bit we would tell them that they would have to eat what we made them and they would normally do it under a lot of complaining but we did it though now they both eat very healthy sometimes it just comes down to having a lot of patience with them and not let them see that they can manipulate you to what they want. we had the fortune of seeing this first hand with my sister she let her daughter say what she wanted all the time and they would make her special meals wherever they went and this was very hard to watch, now that girl is 21 and is always sick and still very picky at what she will eat i hate to see this as their is so many good foods to try in this world and she misses out on a lot of them. also on the other hand their could be something wrong with her taste buds and they need to be looked at but hopefully you can find a happy medium to your daughters eating problem

My kids eat oatmeal or yogurt almost every morning. Oatmeal is the one in a canister that cooks in one minute and we add honey and milk and frozen bluberries. Yogurt is either homemade and we add fruit and honey or YoToddler. On the weekends I will do pancakes or waffles.

Oatmeal isn't a bad thing to eat for breakfast every morning! :-)

my daughter gets the choice of an egg (over easy, scrambled, or scrambled with cheese), a bagel with cream cheese, toast with peanut butter or cinnamon and sugar, or cereal (fruity pebbles or kix). more often than not she'll eat a bagel or cereal. right now she's more on a breakfast strike than anything. she doesn't tend to like to eat before lunch. i will put cereal out on the table (no milk) so she can munch on it, but she rarely does.

I forgot to add that my daughter is two years 3 months old.

Yogurt & cereal bars are what my kids love.

At 2 - whole grain cereal and milk, bran pancakes, whole wheat waffles, yogurt with chopped fresh fruit, oatmeal, cream of wheat, wheatina, french toast, bagels with lox, cream cheese and capers. We have always done one grain and/or protein item and 1-2 fruits (apples, bananas, berries, dried fruit, peaches, peaches, pears, plums, etc). Plus milk

Pancakes on weekends or toast w/ butter or P&J. Fruit & cereal. Eggs & toast & bacon & OJ.

Have you tried Malt-O-Meal? It's a great source of iron and tastes like smooth oatmeal. My son likes the maple flavor and I mix in scrambled egg whites with it. Do you also offer fruit in the morning? For those that are not big breakfast eaters, I would imagine yogurt or fruit would be a good option.

Good luck!

oatmeal, yogurt, scrambbled eggs w/cheese on top, fruit, cereal...almost anything. :)

if she liked oatmeal when she was a baby why don't you try the variety quaker oatmeals and see which fklavor she likes the most and give her that. Oatmeals good for them.

my 18mnth old loves the fruit and cream oatmeal. he also like scrambled eggs and cheese, bananas, yogurt, applesauce, he use to eat homemade cin. apples but not anymore, and remember just cuz she won't eat it the first time doesnt mean she wont eat it if you give it to her again. sometimes they need to see the food ten times before they will even try it. but i am curious to what she has been eating for breakfast intill now

Oh my, I think I would stick with the oatmeal rather than the Trix which is loaded with sugar, colors and various 'stuff'. I would guess it would get her started young with a likeness for sugary sweet food items with little nutrition. It's little better than a doughnut and then she will enjoy fresh food less once she's accustomed to the sweets.

I've always fed basic cereals, eggs, toast, oatmeal or even just fruits for breakfast, depending on how hungry my kids seem. Maybe try some plain yogurt (without the sugary fruits or flavors added) and add your own fresh fruit or flavor - let her pick? Try letting her dip fresh apple slices or orange pieces into the yogurt? Kids love finger foods and dips! Maybe toast with PB or cinnamon toast and some fruit?I think oatmeal is a great choice- maybe just start to change to regular oatmeal (again, not the sugary flavored ones).... She already likes it and its very good for her!

Best wishes!

Have you tried regular oatmeal? I like the plain "quick oats" and I add raisins while cooking to soften them, then a little sugar and cinnamon. I like to be able to control the sugar, and think the instant stuff has too much, IMO. Also, cream of wheat, I do sweeten a little with sugar and then add a big spoon of applesauce in a carved out hole in the middle (yum). Yogurt (Yo-baby), banana and whole grain toast w/butter is fast staple for us, and then all of the stuff you listed that your LO is on strike with! That's tough, I'm trying to think of other things... If she does well with lunch and dinner foods, there's no rule that she can't have something like that for breakfast, not everyone likes 'breakfast' foods. Just a thought! Good luck!

Well, seeing as am British, my kids eat weetabix. You can get it in kroger and HEB, and it is a whole wheat breakfast cereal shaped into an oval shape, really crunchy, slightly sweet, you can crush it up or leave it whole - I also eat it. hot or cold, fruit or yoghurt. it is probably one of the most versatile breakfasts you can get - I am very surprised more people don't eat it over here.

My son LOVES yogurt for breakfast. We will do yogurt and some fruit or yogurt and eggs. On non yogurt mornings he has Cinnamon Life Cereal or eggs and potatoes.

my daughter really likes bagels with cream cheese. They make little mini bagels you can buy, which we used when she was younger. She also likes waffles with applesauce on them instead of syrup. She's always liked yogurt as well.

Fruit, cheese, bacon, toast, cereal (dry), unfrosted pop tarts sometimes, waffles, yogurt, egg, breakfast bars...today she had water, a few pieces of bacon, and 1/2 pint of strawberries.

Sometimes I just put the food down and smile and see if she eats it. Or I eat it, too.

My stepkids got into the habit of mac and cheese for breakfast...we didn't care because it was food, it was reasonable, and they were happy.